Tag Archives: politics

I have no experience as a publisher, editor, or anthologist. Hell, I’ve only been an active member of the genre writing community for a couple years, and I have barely a handful of published credits to my name. As such, my opinion carries little to no weight.

That’s okay. I don’t think I’m smarter than people who have been doing this for decades. I don’t think I have all the answers. I don’t think I know better. All I know is what I believe, and if you don’t agree with me, well, feel free to chalk it up to me talking out of my ass.

Recently, the issue of diversity in publishing has reignited as a hot topic in the horror, bizarro, and weird fiction communities. It’s not a new issue. Nor is it one that necessarily impacts me, a (mostly) hetero-leaning white cis male, all that directly. I’m fortunate in that way. I’m privileged enough to not have to look very hard or very far to find my own perspective reflected back at me. A vast majority of the art and entertainment I consume is dominated by characters I can easily relate to, produced by creators who come from a similar background.

That doesn’t mean the issue of diversity in publishing doesn’t impact me whatsoever, though. It impacts every last one of us, in fact, and we should all view it as a matter of utmost importance. After all, isn’t the value of reading widely one of the great truisms which both readers and writers hold dear? That doesn’t just mean reading a wide variety of styles or genres; it also means reading a wide variety of authors, voices, and perspectives. Being open to a multitude of different worldviews, lifestyles, experiences, and identities is not just the hallmark of a good reader, but of a good person. In turn, our own life experience becomes all the richer for it, exposing us to possibilities we might have otherwise never dreamed of.

Which is why it disappoints me so much when I look at the table of contents of some new anthology and see not even one woman, person of color, or LGBTQ author listed as a contributor. It’s the kind of thing that makes me double-check the copyright page just to make sure that, yes, I am indeed holding a product of the current century.

Even when unintentional, this kind of oversight is especially damning when it comes to anthologies, wherein part of the whole point of the thing is to offer up a veritable witches’ brew of diverse voices. For all the variety that differing writing styles, plots, themes, and characters can provide, even if some contributors are specifically trying to represent perspectives different from the ones they personally identify with, the fact remains that you can line up a hundred hetero white guys and not one of them will be able to reproduce the unique viewpoints of just one woman, person of color, or LGBTQ author.

Of course, we are, all of us, different and unique and we all have our own singular life experiences, blah blah blah. That’s a given. But there are nevertheless some experiences which more or less all individuals of a certain background are more likely to be able to relate to. One hetero white guy may overall have very different life experiences from another hetero white guy, but chances are there remains a common baseline of experience uniting them simply because they are both hetero white guys. It might seem like a small thing, but that’s the kind of fundamental difference that stacks up over time. It affects the way you think and what you expect from life. It affects the very way you understand reality.

In a very real, meaningful way, women experience the world differently than men, people of color experience the world differently than whites, and LGBTQ individuals experience the world differently than straight folks. This does nothing to diminish the value of any individuals’ experiences, nor does it validate or invalidate any of those experiences above or below the others. None of this should be seen as excuse to hold biases against those who are different. Quite the opposite, it should motivate us to reexamine what biases we may already hold because of our individual privileges (or the lack thereof).

Therefore, an anthology which deprives readers of a truly diverse lineup of contributors in turn deprives readers of entire swaths of possibility and experience. Such an anthology inevitably falls far short of its full potential. And, frankly, in a market overflowing with competition, why should any reader be expected to waste their time and money on something that isn’t the very best it can be?

A few days ago, I said as much in a thread on Facebook, only to have my opinion completely dismissed by a writer and editor far more experienced and respected than myself. I don’t disagree with this person being held in high regard (in truth, I count myself as a fan). Nor do I dispute the validity of said person’s own experiences.

And yet…

Here’s the thing. In the simplest terms, this person’s argument boiled down to a rehash of the idea that it is not an editor or publisher’s responsibility to seek out and cultivate diversity, and that an editor or publisher shouldn’t be expected to do anything beyond simply rifle through whatever submissions they receive and select the very best stories they can, regardless of who wrote them.

Seems like pretty sound logic, right?

Eh, not so much.

I’m not even going to go in-depth into the disingenuousness of claiming editors/publishers always accept only the best stories regardless of author (admit it, if Stephen King submitted a pile of barely readable crap, most of us would probably accept it sight unseen, if only to guarantee the book healthy sales numbers and a shot at attention from mainstream media). Nor am I going to spend much time tackling the ugly underlying implication that women, POC, and LGBTQ authors would be published more if only they were good enough writers (independent from the fact that many of the very best writers working in genre fiction today are women, POC, and LGBTQ individuals, this notion blithely ignores years upon years of marginalization and homogenization through which minority voices have often, at best, been treated as novelty items and, at worst, been told in no uncertain terms that they are not welcome here).

Instead, I’m just going to focus on the question of what constitutes an editor or publisher’s “responsibilities.” At first blush, it seems reasonable to suggest that an editor/publisher should be beholden to nothing more and nothing less than the requirement that he or she put out the very best anthology they can, selecting the very best stories from whatever submissions that have found their way to them. Putting aside my earlier assertion that an anthology without a diverse set of contributors is inherently not the best it can be, the flaws with this line of thinking become apparent the moment we start thinking about everything else that we, both writers and readers, contributors and customers, expect from any publisher who wants to be taken seriously.

In general, we expect publishers to not only produce “good” products, but ethical ones as well. Otherwise, why would it cause a scandal when a publisher violates a contract, infringes copyright, fails to pay their writers, exploits rookie authors through predatory “for the love” submission calls, or employs someone with a proven history of sexual assault or who is literally Hitler?

Conducting business in an ethical manner is not just a responsibility of publishers; it’s a responsibility of all people, everywhere, at all times. Arguably, you can be a “good” publisher without being an ethical one, and you can be ethical publisher without being a “good” one. But, as previously noted, the market is awash with competition. When there are publishers out there who are indeed both “good” and ethical, why settle for anything less?

So then, what does it actually mean to be an ethical publisher? Well, aside from avoiding the obvious aforementioned pitfalls of shortchanging authors, employing white supremacist scumbags, etc., being an ethical publisher means, surprise surprise, seeking out and cultivating diversity.

Actively encouraging diversity is important. Not just because it inherently improves the quality of your product and enriches your costumers’ experiences with it, but also because it’s simply the right thing to do.

Why? Because women, POC, and LGBTQ individuals are still drastically underrepresented and often reduced to stereotypes, both on the page and behind the scenes. Because decades of this exact sort of thing has made the overall literary community into a place that is in some ways subtly intolerant and in other ways openly hostile towards voices which do not reflect the already accepted status quo. Because minority voices are already starting from a disadvantaged position which their majority peers can breeze right past, thus making “equality” an impossibility unless steps are taken to correct systemic prejudices.

These days, publishers are too frequently viewed, both by themselves and by writers, as godlike behemoths who exist to pass judgement on that which “good” and that which is “bad,” blessing the “good” with publication and banishing the “bad” to the hell of rejection. Publishers, in this context, become passive beings, monuments which we writers must trek to and grovel before, and if we don’t or can’t make that journey, well, that’s just one less supplicant for the publisher to pass judgement on. No worries; there are still many, many others eager to take our place.

Not all publishers embrace this view, but those that do, those who see no reason to actively search for and court new and different voices, are just plain lazy. Good publishers are not stationary gods. Good publishers are treasure-hunters.

Some publishers may protest, claiming they don’t have the time, energy, or resources to reach out to authors beyond their established pool of reliable contributors. As a reader, though, how am I supposed to trust that such a publisher will indeed put in the work required to make a final product worthy of my hard-earned money if I can’t even trust that publisher to put in the work required to put together a fresh, diverse line-up of contributors?

No one expects the unreasonable. No one expects your average small-press publisher to send out a network of undercover scouts to every community-college workshop and open-mic night on the eastern seaboard in hopes of discovering the next great diamond in the rough. But is it too much to request that a publisher or editor put in a few extra minutes of effort to ensure their latest submissions call explicitly asks for and encourages diversity? Or to ensure that said submissions call is posted in places where diverse authors might actually see it? Like I said at the start, I myself am not an editor or a publisher, so maybe I’m wrong here, but it doesn’t really seem like that taxing a request.

Either way, being that I’m not an editor or a publisher, I don’t really have a whole lot of power to directly correct what I perceive to be a genuine injustice in genre fiction. As a writer, though, I do have the power to say “No thank you, I don’t want to be involved” to any project pretending it’s 1955 and that heteronormative whitebread sausagefests are still acceptable. And, more importantly, as a reader I have the power to say “Fuck you, you will not get my money” to any product whose creators are too lazy to be bothered to put in even the bare minimum of effort to ensure diversity.

I may be nobody and my opinion might not carry much weight, but my cash sure does. Some editors and publishers can’t see past their own privilege, but they sure as shit can see the difference between good business and bad business.

I can remember a time when saying that garnered quizzical looks from most people and the familiar owl-song of “Who?” Nowadays, being a lover of weird fiction and saying you venerate Lovecraft is like being in a metal band and citing Black Sabbath as an influence. It’s so much a given that it’s virtually meaningless. For me, though, Lovecraft’s impact is not limited to a superficial aesthetic focused on tentacles, mystical tomes, and malevolent alien gods. For me, Lovecraft’s impact, though based in fiction, is evident not just in my creative endeavors, but in the very fundamentals of my worldview, the way I understand reality.

It was Lovecraft who introduced me to the idea of humanity’s ultimate insignificance in the grand scope of the universe, as well as the idea that the five senses and three spatial dimensions mankind can perceive are far from the limits of possible existence. Cosmicism. Atheism. Mechanistic materialism. These were radical concepts when I was still a kid reading Goosebumps books, rifling through paperbacks at a yard sale and fatefully finding an anthology of stories by Machen, Blackwood, LeFanu, and, yes, Lovecraft. In many ways, he helped make me who I am today.

Please keep that in mind when I say the following:

H.P. Lovecraft was an awful fucking person.

As a reader and wanna-be writer, I deeply respect Lovecraft’s work. I think he was brilliant, an artist misunderstood in his own time and often misunderstood still today. And there are many details of his life that are pitiable, unfair, and deserving of sympathy. Still, human beings don’t come in simple binary terms, just good or just bad, but rather shades of both. In many ways, Lovecraft was a good person. In just as many ways, though, he was an awful one. It is up to each of us as individuals to weigh his sins and virtues and come to our own judgements about whether he was one more than the other. But you cannot deny that he was awful in certain ways. And, my oh my, we’re not talking about bad hygiene here. We’re talking about racism, homophobia, misogyny, anti-Semitism, the whole nine.

It doesn’t matter if Lovecraft “softened his more extreme views later in life” or if he “was just a product of his time.” It doesn’t matter that he eventually married a Jewish woman or befriended a gay man. He still penned poems about how grotesque and subhuman people of color were. He still supported Hitler, for fuck’s sake. No matter how much we hem and haw and try to undersell the contemptibility of it, the fact remains: Lovecraft is on the wrong side of history.

Separating the art from the artist will only get you so far here, because a huge and important dimension of Lovecraft’s fiction derives specifically from despicable prejudices. His fiction brims with subtext about the “purity” of races and the “horror of miscegenation.” Even his less overtly bigotry-laden pieces are affected by it (and, as depressing as it may be to acknowledge, they arguably even benefit from it). They all express a shrill, hysterical dread of “the Other,” a fear Lovecraft was able to write about like no one else before or since.

Of course, Lovecraft is hardly alone in his awfulness. Any writer dead long enough for his or her work to be considered “classic” has more than a few skeletons in the closet: Rudyard Kipling was racist. Norman Mailer was homophobic., Charles Bukowski was sexist. Roald Dahl was anti-Semitic. And so on and so on. The ugliness of an artist’s beliefs does nothing to diminish the importance of their art, but the importance of their art does nothing to diminish the ugliness of their beliefs either. Just as people are so complicated and multifaceted that we cannot simply boil them all down to just “good” or “bad,” our approach to thinking about the authors who came before us must likewise be complicated and multifaceted.

As much as we want things to be simplified, nothing is ever truly simple. We can put Lovecraft on a pedestal for his contributions to storytelling while also taking him down a peg or two for the prejudices which directly led to those very contributions. That’s not contradictory or hypocritical. It’s just complex. It requires nuance, but it’s the same as the ability to be happy with the person you are now while still regretting the mistakes you made in the past that hurt others. We can do both. We have to do both.

See, progress is not made from simply recognizing the errors of history and that’s it. We have to learn from them, too. You are happy with the person you are not just because you are aware that you once did wrong, but because you regret those wrongs and have vowed to not repeat them. You have become a better person. You have changed. Progress comes from change. Change is necessary.

I know, I know. This is old news. The debate over Lovecraft’s racism and the WFA bust has been beaten into the dirt by now and the last thing the world needs is one more jabroni jumping in to regurgitate a bunch of opinions that plenty of other people have already stated and that even more people have viciously ripped apart. But, fuck it, this is my blog and I haven’t had my say yet. I may be a nobody with (at the time of this writing) naught but a handful of small-press publications to my name, which may mean that no one gives a good goddamn about which side of the fence I’m even on. Nevertheless, it’s the year 2017 and that means every over-opinionated loudmouth with an internet connection on Earth gets to at least pretend someone out there is listening.

Well, I’m over-opinionated. I’m a loudmouth. I’ve got an internet connection. And I live on the planet Earth. So, here we go. Let’s pretend.

Obviously something to lose your shit over, right? I mean, it’s not like the U.S. president just bombed the ever-lovin’ hell out of Syria and Afghanistan, is it? This is way worse.

In any case, the WFA is back in the limelight again and the pro and anti crowds are squabblin’ anew. Ah, just like old times.

For what it’s worth I personally like the WFA’s new look. I think it’s a lot of things: elegant, timeless, atmospheric, evocative. Others say it’s meaningless or that it looks like a cheap Halloween knick-knack. Whatever. At least it’s not a pewter dragon. Evaluating the aesthetic quality of the sculpture ultimately comes down to personal taste and thus is an entirely pointless debate to have. There’s no reason to complain unless you’re a whiny, Lovecraft-obsessed, fedora-tippin’ douche who thinks it’s an utter travesty that ol’ Howie got shown the door in favor of a piece of kindling. Boo. Fucking. Hoo.

By my tone here, I’m assuming you can tell where I stand on this whole thing.

Remember what I said about change and how important it is for progress? The WFA is a perfect example of that kind of change. It’s not just a shrugging compromise to those goshdarn politically correct snowflakes. I’ve made my feelings on this subject known before: I hate political correctness. Respectful change made in the name of progress, inclusion, and justice, however? That, I like.

Listen, making the award a bust of a single author was pretty dumb to begin with, regardless of why it was done (and, yes, believe it or not there is a decent justification for it beyond just “We loves us some Lovecraft”; just ask Gahan Wilson, the guy who designed it). Besides the potential PR blunder of accidentally picking a vile goddamn racist, such an award becomes a celebration of the author it depicts more than the one receiving it (remember this point, we’ll come back to it later).

What if the winner doesn’t like Lovecraft? Has never read Lovecraft? Is not influenced by him? Is completely ignorant of him? How does that honor Lovecraft or the award-winner? What if the vein of fiction the winner works in has little to no connection to Lovecraft’s work? After all, “fantasy” is a pretty broad category. The idea that Lovecraft would be an appropriate representation of all possibilities that the word could convey is obviously ridiculous. It would necessitate someone asserting that Lovecraft embodies the entire spectrum of fantastic fiction on a fundamental level to such a degree that no living writer could ever not in some way be a reflection of him. And even I, the guy who attributes his entire understanding of his place in the cosmos to Lovecraft, won’t go that far.

“But what about the Oscars or the Grammys?” you say. “No one ever thinks changing them would be a good idea.” That’s true. Except the Oscar is a bald naked knight and the Grammy is a friggin’ phonograph. Neither, you’ll note, are responsible for a poem called “On the Creation of Niggers.” Nor did either, to my knowledge, ever called homosexuality “repugnant” or refer to homosexuals as “damned sissies” and “cake-eaters.”

Those of you who don’t know what it’s like, try this: Check your privilege for a second and put yourself in the shoes of someone who deals with racism, anti-Semitism, or homophobia in a very real, painful way… every… single… day. Imagine that in spite of the systemic prejudices working against you, you accomplish something so extraordinary that it merits a prestigious award. Now imagine you get the award, and it’s shaped like the face of someone who famously, unabashedly derided you, and everyone like you, as repellent and barely human, and who advocated Nazi-esque eugenics as a way of purging your kind from existence. Imagine being asked to pose with that award and smile. Imagine being asked to put that award on your shelf and have it look down on you every day of your life, a reminder of just what kind of legacy you labor in the shadow of.

One last thing: Imagine being told that your feelings on this matter are irrelevant, that you should be grateful to get this much, that the integrity of a fucking paperweight is more important than your integrity as a person.

Tell me, would you feel celebrated? Would you feel respected? Would you feel honored?

That’s what an award is supposed to do, honor its recipients (see, I told you we’d come back to this).

If you want to honor Lovecraft, build a fuckin’ shrine in your backyard. Do anything you want, that’s all about you. But awards are not about you. They’re not about famous dead guys either, I don’t give a shit how important they are. Awards are about the people who win them, period. They are about the present and the future, not the past. They’re not memorials. Making an annual award into such a thing at the expense of the people living in the here and now is indulgent, morbid, and gross. It’s a neverending act of masturbation, like an ouroboros circle-jerk.

Granted, some will say it’s not about honoring just Lovecraft but rather the values Lovecraft symbolizes, i.e. the values that the aforementioned Gahan Wilson cited when explaining why he chose ol’ Howard’s ugly mug in the first place. Wilson said: “The point of the awards was, is, and hopefully shall be to give a visible, potentially usable sign of appreciation to writers working in the area of fantastic literature, an area too often distinguished by low financial remuneration and indifference.”

Notice how he said “hopefully” there? That’s because things change, even the meanings of symbols. Don’t believe me? Ask the swastika. Nowadays, Lovecraft’s face has a lot in common with a swastika in some circles, whether we like it or not. Them’s the breaks. Adapt or die.

Seriously, do you want to be a dinosaur when that inevitable meteor called progress comes hurtling towards this hunk of rock we call home? Do you want to be on the wrong side of history like your homeboy Howie was?

Time marches on. Change is vital for the betterment of culture. That’s not to say legacies don’t remain important, but not to a degree where we should cling to them to the detriment of evolving paradigms. If anyone should understand this, it’s people who work in the arts. The best art has always been about shaking up the status quo. Lovecraft himself did this in his own way by subverting humanity’s egoism and superstitious mysticism with his philosophy of cosmicism and tales of sanity-shattering extradimensional malignance.

Believe it or not, change does not automatically delete the past from existence. Making the new WFA into a spoopy tree doesn’t send a ripple back through time transforming the previous years’ awards into spoopy trees, too. Nor does it erase all those contributions to genre fiction Lovecraft is responsible for. It’s just like a Hollywood remake of a beloved classic; stupid people will bitch and moan but the original is still available on DVD, just as good as it ever was. Nothing is “ruined.” No one’s talking about wiping Lovecraft’s name from the history books, denying his influence, or revoking his “Inner Circle of Literary Icons” membership card. All anyone wants is to promote a more nuanced understanding of what Lovecraft represents in his totality, not just the parts we want him to represent. Understanding is more meaningful than unquestioning reverence, don’t ya think?

At the end of the day, as I said before, the WFA is a fucking paperweight. Is it really worth getting bent out of shape over? Is it really worth alienating already marginalized sectors of the literary community?

Even Lovecraft knew the ultimate truth: Humanity is but a dust mote lost in a sprawling, indifferent universe. The entirety of Earth’s history adds up to little more than a fraction of a split-severed second when contrasted against the vastness of infinity. Our differences are trivial, and we are ourselves trivialities.

Recently, in the horror and bizarro writing community, there’s been a bit of a ruckus kicked up by a certain author going on a tear, accusing his contemporaries of censorship, claiming that genre fiction is on the wane, and opining that the reason for said decline is because of this supposedly rampant censorship.

I won’t mention the author by name (let’s just call him the Odd Man Out), nor will I level any attacks at him directly. Partially, that’s because the man in question was one of the first members of the fiction community to see anything of worth in my own writing. He gave me a chance, encouraged me when I felt like giving up, and even went on to be the first person to publish some of my work. So I owe him. But I just cannot in good conscience agree with the things he says nor with his immature shit-stirring antics. Though the situation is unfortunate, I can’t deny that the cold shoulder he’s received from former friends and colleagues can be attributed directly to his own self-righteous, antagonistic approach.

In any case, however you feel about the Odd Man Out, the question remains: Does he have a point? Are the spheres of horror fiction, bizarro fiction, weird fiction, and transgressive fiction dying? Is there really an “epidemic” of forced censorship in the genre fiction community, perhaps perpetuated by some foaming-at-the-mouth mob of hysterical, ideological, left-wing bigots who can’t accept any beliefs divergent from their own?

My, there’s a lot to unwrap here. So let’s get the bigger, more complex issue out of the way first. That would be the issue of free speech versus censorship. Before we get too deep into this, let me say a few things:

First, I should acknowledge that I consider myself a progressive liberal, as well as a sex-positive feminist and a secular humanist, and I have very little tolerance for racism, misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and the like.

Second, despite that, I do think that people in general need to lighten up and not be so damned sensitive sometimes, and not only am I entertained by art that is deliberately, unapologetically shocking and offensive, I also think there is legitimate social value inherent in such works.

Third, despite that, I recognize that, as a (mostly) hetero-leaning white cis male, I can say all this from a place of privilege, having not had to deal with anything even resembling the kind of prejudice and stereotyping that might lead, say, a woman or a gay person or a person of color to respond more sensitively to things that I might ignorantly perceive as innocuous. Thus, I strive to be as empathetic as possible without sacrificing my own personal identity and values. It’s a delicate balance, one that I am still very, very far from mastering. But I hope it’s worth something that I recognize this fact.

Having said all this, I must admit that I agree quite a bit (though not completely, not by a long shot) with We Need to Talk About Kevin scribe Lionel Shriver, who, during her opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival earlier this year, argued against certain ideas which suggest that if a writer hasn’t experienced something him or herself then they have little to no right to write about it, and if they do have a right, then that right is conditional upon meeting the standards of… I don’t know… someone. The majority? Whoever shouts the loudest?

This is, of course, ridiculous. Fiction writing is all about asking oneself to imagine the world through the eyes of another. No one, not even someone who has legitimately lived that life, has any standing to decree that an author’s individual perception is somehow invalid, even if it is demonstrably inaccurate. Fiction writing, lest we forget, is not to be confused with news reporting. It’s less important to “get it right” than to fully express oneself, and that can include expressing such things as bias or privilege. Creative writing is a very personal art form, one that should reflect the worldview of its author, however skewed or just plain “incorrect” that worldview may be. It’s about subjective reality, not objective reality. Concerns like “respectful portrayal” and “cultural sensitivity” should barely even enter into it, if at all, and then only at the author’s discretion.

It’s okay if you disagree with me. Please understand, I’m not advocating insensitivity. I’m simply saying that sensitivity should not be dictated by some kind of majority-imposed “community standards.” All standards, both aesthetic and ethical, should be decided individually, from person to person. If you read a book and feel the author in question was not adequately “respectful,” that is your prerogative. It’s also you prerogative to make your opinion known as far and wide as you wish. That’s fine. But suggesting that the author “should” have done something a certain way to better meet your criteria, even if you have the masses behind you, is simple egotism. And putting excessive, abusive pressure on an author to feel ashamed or to recognize your own viewpoint as correct over their own is just untoward.

I suspect the Odd Man Out would agree with me so far. I suspect he would also agree with me when I say that I think contributing to a culture that would actively ostracize those who don’t meet its collectively decided standards is oppressive and backwards. After all, it’s one thing to openly share your criticisms of a piece of work; it’s quite another to argue that your criticisms are objectively correct and to try and scare up a mob of like-minded critics to browbeat the author.

Wait. Don’t leave yet.

See, where the Odd Man Out and I likely diverge is in our understanding of what constitutes legitimate criticism versus mere browbeating, as well as what constitutes a contribution to the aforementioned oppressive, backwards culture. Despite what you may think, I’m not one of those people who equates “freedom of speech” with “freedom from criticism,” as the Odd Man Out appears to be. Nor do I fail to realize that allowing for criticism inherently allows for criticism based on majority opinion, as well as (and more importantly) criticism that comes with real-world consequences. That, however, is something the Odd Man Out seems either unable or unwilling to acknowledge.

Keep in mind, freedom of speech is very important to me, so much so that I have a framed copy of the Bill of Rights hanging on my wall. The idea of art in general and writing specifically being maintained as an outlet for unfettered free speech is very important to me. But freedom of speech is not a one-way street. Freedom of speech not only protects the speaker but those who speak in response to what that speaker has said. I have the right to say or write anything I want. You have the right to say or write anything in response. Of course, I also have the right to respond to your response, and you have the right to respond to my response to your response, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. As I said, regardless of what the Odd Man Out seems to want, freedom of speech does not equate to freedom from criticism or consequence.

Example: Let’s say you’re a big-time author, a New York Times bestseller even. You have a deal with a successful world-famous publishing house. They plaster advertisements for your upcoming book in widely circulated newspapers and magazines. They even pay for TV air time to run commercials. Then a reviewer reads the book and posts a scathing critique talking about how they were offended by it. Other folks, similarly offended, speak up as well. Lots of folks, in fact. The cable stations refuse to run the ads. The newspapers and magazines do the same. Stores pull copies of your book off the shelves. Eventually, your publishing house drops you.

It’s not because they’re trying to stifle your freedom of speech. It’s because they don’t want their brand associated with yours. This is all, of course, very extreme and very tragic. But none of it is actually about suppression. Most for-profit businesses try to appeal to the widest possible audience, so as to maximize revenues. If enough people want something, they’ll be happy to sell it. If enough people don’t want it, then they’ll wash their hands of it. That’s all it is. You’re still free to say anything you want. Hell, depending on the terms if you’re contract, you can probably take your manuscript to a different publisher if you want.

This is an example of consequence, not censorship. You have a right to free speech. You don’t have a right to a well-funded, corporate-backed, nationally visible platform. Sorry to break it to you. It’s not a “mind crime.” It’s business.

Likewise, let’s say you’re a Facebook user who posts a picture of a famous rock ‘n’ roll album cover. Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy as an example. Yes, the one with the naked butts on it. It’s not porn. It’s not explicit. It’s hardly even offensive to most people’s eyes. It’s Led Zeppelin for fuck’s sake! But, uh oh, someone reported it and now Facebook has taken the image down. Let’s go even further down the hypothetical rabbit hole and say that, unlikely as the scenario might be, your post results in your entire Facebook account being terminated. Lame, right?

Believe it or not, though, your freedom of speech has not been impinged here. Facebook, regardless of how it may feel sometimes, is not real life. It is not the be-all end-all of social media, let alone self-expression. Facebook is a service. It’s not a right. When you joined, you ticked a little box that said “I agree to the terms and conditions of blah blah blah,” something like that. I didn’t read it. You didn’t read it. Nobody read it. Doesn’t matter, though, because it’s still a legally binding contract. And if you had read it, you’d know that anything you post on Facebook is subject to Facebook’s standards, not yours. This is a permission you gave them. You agreed to it when you signed up. No one forced you to join. Their house, their rules.

Again, these things are consequences. Not censorship.

One last example for the road. Let’s say you have a blog. You go somewhere, to some kind of group event. You see someone there you find attractive and so begin following this person around. Some call it stalking. You call it simply having a crush. For the purposes of this hypothetical, it’s irrelevant who’s right or wrong. What is relevant is that when you get back from the event you post on your blog about your experience, including the part about you shadowing the object of your unrequited affections around the whole damn time. Some of your readers, of course, don’t find this anecdote as charming as you do. They pepper your comments section with insults. They really dress you down. The person you followed makes it clear that they felt harassed by your behavior, and friends of that person publicly suggest that you should take your blog post down. So you do. You just don’t want to deal with it anymore.

The thing is, no one forced you. You made the final decision. You’re the one who made the whole situation public in the first place. When you post something online you openly invite the Internet to respond to it. Problem is, you may not like the response you get.

Say it with me, one last time: Consequences. Not censorship.

Now I know some of the things I’ve said in these last few paragraphs may seem, at first glance, inconsistent with things I said earlier. To wit: Earlier I said it’s oppressive and backwards to put pressure on an author you don’t agree with, but now all of a sudden I’m saying that if someone does do that it somehow doesn’t equate to censorship? That’s crazy, right? Except it’s not. Because that’s accurate; it’s not “censorship.” It’s unfortunate. It’s shitty. I don’t typically agree with it, approve of it, or advocate for it. But I don’t typically agree with, approve of, or advocate for sheltering people from that kind of thing either. It’s an accepted risk we all acknowledge by exercising our free speech.

Listen. We live in tense, troubled times, caught between a new generation that is campaigning for massive positive cultural change and an old guard that is confused and scared and holding onto the past. I don’t believe in political correctness, but calling out bigoted or predatory behavior is not about being politically correct. What some (including, to my chagrin, the aforementioned Shriver) dismissively refer to as “identity politics” I view as a major part of the ongoing battle for civil rights, basic human rights.

I hate to admit that I would ever agree with Odd Man Out and his “anti-SJW” (*cringe*) stance, but I do agree, on a very general level, that we could all benefit from taking things in stride more often, having a broader sense of humor, dismissing “cultural appropriation” as a largely fallacious concept too often misused to hold back positive multiculturalism, disengaging with kneejerk outrage culture, and empathizing as much with our opponents as we want them to empathize with us. It’s true, sometimes those of us trying to be empathetic and inclusive try too hard. We can on occasion get overzealous and paradoxically err on the side of reactivity instead of understanding. But is that not better than erring on the side of passivity? Because sometimes it’s not just a matter of an insensitive joke or wrong-headed character portrayal. Sometimes you’re not dealing with someone who is merely oblivious to their own privilege. Sometimes you’re dealing with a straight-up piece-of-shit human being.

See, hate is not a difference of opinion. Racists, misogynists, homophobes, war-mongers, etc., they’re not just “opinionated” people. They’re bad people. They’re fucking monsters. Their ideas aren’t “controversial.” They’re vile. Unjust. Destructive. As I said, I’m all for taking things in stride and laughing it off, but there are times when letting something go is just as good as condoning it. When it’s something as indefensible as, say, sexual harassment or white supremacy, we can’t afford to let it slide. We need to be active and vigilant and committed in calling these things out, in standing up against them, in fighting back. The problem with the Odd Man Out (one of them, at least) is that he seems to see hollow preening moralizing where the rest of us see right versus wrong, good versus evil. He’d probably say this sentiment is melodramatic or that it’s indicative of delusions of grandeur. I would counter by saying that he is, in this instance, lazy and apathetic.

Maybe you’re like the Odd Man Out. Maybe you don’t agree with me. But remember when I said that everyone needs to decide their own aesthetic and ethical standards? Well these are my standards. I respect that yours may be different than mine. I respect that you have that freedom. But that doesn’t mean I have to respect your standards themselves, and it certainly doesn’t mean I have to respect you. Nor do you have to respect me. Once again, it’s not a one-way street. That’s perfectly fine.

I’m starting to lose my train of thought now (already been wrestling it like hell this whole damn time) and at almost 3000 words I think this post has gone on long enough.

TL;DR version: Criticism and censorship are two different things, no matter how heated or even personal that criticism may get. How you react to it is entirely up to you. There’s no witch hunt here, Odd Man Out. From where I’m standing it doesn’t look like it’s other people in the genre fiction community who can’t handle differing viewpoints. From where I’m standing it looks like it’s just you.

As for all the faithful readers out there with a taste for the outre, fret not. There is no slippery slope here. “Political correctness” (if that’s what you want to call it) has not had a chilling effect on horror and bizarro fiction. I’ll talk more about that next time, when I post Part 2. But suffice to say, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of genre fiction’s death are greatly exaggerated.

It’s been about a month since the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. I have been overwhelmed with shock and disgust, heartbreak and hopelessness since finding out that enough of my fellow Americans support a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, corrupt, lying bully to get that man elected to the most powerful political office in the nation. Those feelings are only now starting to fade somewhat into the white noise of my daily life, not so much diminishing in their awfulness as simply coming to a point where they no longer outpace my ability to cope with them. I have to tell you, in the first few weeks following the election, I was a panicked, pessimistic mess. The only thing that helped me stay sane was a timely vacation in Providence, Rhode Island, with my girlfriend, which I had just begun when the Trump victory (something that felt like America’s death sentence) was announced.

It’s also been about a month and a week since I started this blog. I originally planned to follow up my first post, a rundown of five of my all-time favorite horror novels, with a rundown of five of my all-time favorite non-horror novels. But with the wounds of the election still so fresh, I didn’t really feel up to being the guy saying “Hey people, I know we’re all scared of this rising regressive regime which values violent self-interest and religious fundamentalism over compassion, logic, or basic human rights… but, c’mon, let me tell you why I like Moby-Dick!” I’m sure I’ll get around to boring you with my fanboy gushing eventually, but for now I think I’ll take this opportunity to bore you with some pseudo-intellectual pop psychology, philosophical wankery, and Cliff’s Notes-style genre history lessons instead.

See, while everyone (including yours truly) was pissing themselves over the grim possibilities of life under Herr Trump, Bram Stoker Award-winning horror writer and fellow Pennsylvanian Brian Keene took to social media and posted the following message to his Facebook wall:

“A Message to Young Horror Writers:

Stephen King and Texas Chainsaw happened in the shadow of Watergate/Vietnam.

Splatterpunk happened in the shadow of Reagan.

Vertigo Comics happened in the shadow of Thatcher.

My generation’s success happened in the shadow of Bush Junior.

Now it’s your turn. Go write about monsters and truth, because that’s our job, and there’s folks your age that are going to need it. Horror always does well in times of trouble, because people are seeking to escape from the very real monsters of the world, and curl up with safe, comforting, make-believe monsters. Don’t let those people down.”

Well said, and totally accurate, though admittedly small comfort (upon first glance) to those of us more worried about the well-being of ourselves, our loved ones, our country, and even the world as a whole than about the quality of the media we consume or the profitability of creating it. In that vein, Keene was deluged with negative comments accusing him of shrugging off people’s very real concerns in favor of quipping something along the lines of “Well, at least the horror genre’s going to be booming again, hurr hurr.” I’m not going to sugarcoat it, there’s a teeny tiny kernel of truth inside that response. Like I said, Keene’s words are totally accurate but also, on the surface at least, not much more than a very minor comfort. In the grand scheme of things, it feels like a virtually infinitesimal, utterly petty comfort indeed. It’s hard to give much of a shit about make-believe monsters when you’re worried about losing your health insurance, your right to marry, or even your citizenship.

That said, I think a lot of Keene’s detractors were merely lashing out, taking their fresh pain and fear out on someone who ultimately didn’t deserve it. Someone who ultimately was right.

Make no mistake, Keene was right. Horror does thrive in times of strife. These things are facts, not opinions. In addition to the examples he provided, it’s worth noting that the explosion of so-called “torture-porn” in horror cinema (embodied by the Saw and Hostel franchises) happened in the shadow of the War on Terror, which shoved the brutal realities of combat, as well as graphic videos of hostages being beheaded, into the faces of a previously sheltered young generation. In the ’80s, the horror genre, in all its various forms and formats, became increasingly fixated with displays of gore, transformation, mutation, and disease, all in the wake of this new ravager of the flesh called AIDS. In the ’60s and ’70s, as New Age spiritualism rattled the cages of established Western religions, the Satanic sacrilege of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, Jeffrey Konvitz’s The Sentinel, and the like reached a fever pitch. In the midst of the ’50s, when Cold War anxieties and McCarthyist oppression closed in on the American psyche from both sides, the pop cultural zeitgeist was under constant invasion from body snatchers, shape-changing things from other worlds, and unstoppable, absorbing, individuality-erasing red blobs.

Why? Why does horror thrive in times of strife? Are audiences looking to replace their real-life terrors with more easily conquerable fictional ones? Or maybe horror booms not because of audience appetites but creator motivations. Is part of horror’s function, perhaps, to hold a mirror up to society and show us its reflection, warts and all? Certainly a genre preoccupied with “bad things” will have a lot to work with in times when bad things are in no short supply.

Is this all a meaningful form of self-expression, an act of political protest, an indulgence in escapism, or just fear-mongering opportunism? I suspect, in truth, the answer is “all of the above,” though the dreamer in me would like to believe that the overall mixture is such that the fourth option is in the minority.

When all is said and done, few genres of art and entertainment can capture the heart of an age better than horror, because horror is the genre that, more than any other, recognizes that said heart is often quite black. Fear is an ever-present puzzle piece of the human experience; we never feel truly and completely safe. In that sense, it is a common ground that unifies us all.

Of course, art in general is at its most vital when emotions are heightened, when sometimes love or joy but more likely dread or rage burn in your veins with such heat that you just have to find a way to let some of it out, be it onto the page or canvas or celluloid, whatever. That’s why horror never completely goes out of style. Looking at those times when it most definitely is in style, however, one surely finds that not only its popularity but also its overall quality tends to rise and fall alongside the misfortunes of man.

When Keene pointed this out, I think some of his readers misinterpreted it as an attempt to latch onto some kind of flimsy silver lining. I think, in the haze of their hysteria, they saw a sleazy, insensitive bid to ring personal benefit out of a situation that could otherwise spell real horror for millions of innocent people. They saw encouragement for aspiring writers (like myself) to take advantage of others’ misfortune, spinning pain into profit. But they failed to see what Keene’s real intent was, or what I at least believe it was.

That is, he was making a call to action.

Keene’s political viewpoints are different from my own, no doubt. But his call to action is about as apolitical as one can be. It’s not unlike the calls to action others have made as of late: A reminder that, yeah, you’re scared and angry and bitter, but there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way, people suffering under even worse circumstances than yourself, and what those people need right now is for someone to help them out.

Look, I get it. You’re frightened. Maybe you feel betrayed. You want to crawl into a cocoon of selfishness and just not care anymore. As I said earlier, I’ve been there. I’m still there, to a degree. It’s taken me a long time to shake off the worry and the hopelessness. It’s not just sour grapes because my “side” lost in this election. I genuinely feel like the bad guys won here and I believe a lot of people are going to get hurt and that a dangerous precedent has been set. This election was not just any old presidential election; the stakes were real.

They still are.

Here’s the thing we have to remember: A battle was lost, admittedly a very big battle, but the war goes on. You don’t get to give up. You don’t get to just throw in the towel because things are about to get a hell of a lot harder. You do that and you’re no better than the people who got us into this mess. More than ever, we need to stand together and strive even harder to make sure things keep going forward, not back. We have to be willing to go farther than we’ve ever gone before. We have to protect the people we love, defend those who cannot defend themselves, call out corruption and deception wherever we find it, and anytime we lose we have to get back up and go at it again. The bad guys won’t stop fighting to mold the world in their image. Being a good guy means that you don’t stop trying to mold it in yours either.

“Go write about monsters and truth, because that’s our job, and there’s folks your age that are going to need it,” Keene said. He wasn’t talking about making the best of a bad situation. He was talking about doing your best even within a bad situation. There’s a difference.

As different as his politics may be from mine, I know Keene isn’t a fool. He isn’t selfish or callous. Nor is he so consumed with being a writer that writing is all he cares about. When he said “go write” he wasn’t saying to do only that. He was saying to continue on, continue standing up for what you believe in, but also remember that, as a writer, you have an additional tool in your toolbox that a lot of other people don’t have. You have a forum through which to help your fellow man in a manner that is important and meaningful in its own way. You can engage with your own fears and the fears of others. You can be a comfort to others like you yourself have sought.

So go out and contribute. Do something. Campaign for positive change. Donate to charities. Protest against inequalities. Run for office. Raise awareness. Stand vigilant. Speak out. Volunteer. Vote. And through it all, write. If you’re a writer, you write. That’s what you do. Take all of your anxieties and use them as fuel for your own fiction. Take that fiction and use it to attack the demons plaguing the world we live in, or use it to comfort readers who feel alone in their terror. Better yet, do both.